Various styles of power-driven meat-cutting tools have been devised wherein a ring blade is rotatably mounted on a holder which in turn is mounted on a manually operated, power-driven handle or handpiece. These tools have been used for some time to facilitate the removal of meat or fish from a carcass, primarily in a trimming operation or for removing the meat remains from the bones. These cutting tools are either electrically or pneumatically driven. Some examples of these prior cutting tools are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,269,010; 3,852,882; 4,170,063; 4,178,683; 4,198,750 and 4,324,043.
These power driven tools or trimming knives as they are generally referred to in the industry, consist of a tubular handpiece terminating in an arcuate-shaped front end and formed with a hollow bore extending throughout the longitudinal length thereof. The annular blade holder is attached to the arcuate front end of the handpiece with the ring blade being removably mounted thereon by various mounting arrangements. The blade is formed with gear teeth extending around the top thereof, which are in driving engagement with a pinion gear rotatably mounted within the bore adjacent the front end of the handpiece.
In electrically driven knives, a flexible cable, one end of which is connected to a motor located adjacent to the work area, enters the rear of the handle and extends through the bore and terminates in a squared end. The squared end is engaged in a complementary-shaped opening formed in the rear of the pinion gear for rotatably driving the gear. In pneumatically driven knives, a squared shaft end of an air motor is engaged in the rear opening of the pinion gear for driving the gear.
These trimming knives have various size diameter blade holders and cutting blades mounted thereon depending upon the particular trimming operation for which the knives are to be used.
During the trimming operation, an operator draws the knife across the work piece and sections or slices of meat or fish are cut from the main body or carcass. The severed sections pass through the central opening of the blade housing and blade. It has been found that in using such knives, it is difficult to control the depth of the cut of the meat being removed. This results in increased cutting strokes or passes of the knife over the carcass to remove certain portions of the meat, such as in fatty areas, in contrast to other areas where too much lean meat is removed by a singe movement of the knife across the carcass. This adversely affects the appearance of the trimmed surface of the meat and removes unwanted meat from the main body reducing the yield of higher quality, more expensive lean meat.
Many of these problems have been eliminated by prior art depth control gauges for trimming knives, primarily used for trimming meat, such as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,461,557, 3,688,403 and 4,575,937. Although these prior art depth control gauges do perform satisfactorily for certain trimming operations, they do not permit the operator to maintain a constant size and shape of the strip of material severed from the work body.
It is desirable, when trimming certain types of meat and fish, that the slices have a certain configuration both for aesthetic purposes and for enhanced trimming results. Thus, for certain trimming functions, a particular size and cross-sectional configuration of the strip is desired throughout the trimming operation to provide a plurality of similar strips which can be sold as end products, wherein the shape is constant and aesthetically pleasing to the final consumer.
These prior depth gauge constructions do not permit such uniformity and constant cross-sectional configuration of the severed slice or strip by the use of these known depth gauges due to the unrestrained and undefined area between the edge of the gauge plate and the rotating knife blade.
Another feature of these prior depth gauge plates is that the entire outer periphery of the cutting edge of the blade is exposed for use when cutting the meat or fish. Again, this increases the difficulty of providing a uniform severed slice time after time as the knife is manually passed across the main meat or fish carcass.
There is no known depth control gauge for trimming knives, primarily used for trimming meat or fish, of which I am aware which enables both the depth and cross-sectional configuration of the strip severed from the main work body to be uniform for each trimming movement or path of the knife across the work body.